united states •

Air Pollution Affects Many U.S. Cities

Despite efforts to reduce pollution, the United States’ air is still “too often dangerous to breathe” for almost half the country, according to the results of a report by the American Lung Association.

While the study cites “encouraging progress” in most cities, there is still “evidence of troubling challenges” as 138.5 million Americans are still affected by pollution, Association President Harold P. Wimmer explained in a statement.

“The State of the Air 2015” Report Card, which was released Wednesday, published a ranking of cities by their levels of particle pollution or soot, and ozone pollution, or smog, between 2011 and 2013.

According to the report, Los Angeles was the “metropolitan area with the worst ozone pollution”. It is the fifth city in the rankings for particle pollution levels.

Eleven cities were tied on the first spot of the cleanest air in the United States, including Bismarck, N.D.; Elmira, N.Y., Salinas, Calif., and Cape Coral, Fla..

Surprisingly, New York City did not enter the top 10 in either category, stopping at No. 11 for smog. The Big Apple has even has 47 times the levels of smog than the country’s average.

Many cities, especially those form the Eastern coast, have cleaned up their air, “thanks to cleaner fuels and cleaner diesel fleets,” the study said.

However, most of the worst days for air quality have happened in recent years mostly because of the climate change that opens the door for pollution, according to the report.

The actual drought in California, which is blamed on climate change, has prompted a raise in days with soot and dirt, said another research released earlier this month.

“Continued progress cleaning up pollution makes a difference, but a changing climate is making it harder to protect human health,” the lung association’s study found.

Pollution can be extremely detrimental to health, shortening lifespans and increasing asthma attacks, strokes, heart attacks, and lung cancer, research has discovered. Air pollution is harmful for four in 10 people and dangerous for children, causing autism risks and fetal brain development.

The lung association asked lawmakers to impose stricter pollution standards to limit the health risks.

The group said that by 2025, new limits could prevent almost 8,000 premature deaths, but also 1.9 school days missed and 1.8 million asthma attacks in children.

“Our nation has made significant progress, but clearly more must be done to reduce the burden of air pollution and improve the health of millions of Americans,” the study authors explained.

Image Source: CBS News

Saudi Arabia Prevents US Embassy Attack

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Saudi Arabia announced the arrest of 93 suspects whom had ties to the Islamic State. The country says they were planning multiple attacks on the U.S. Embassy, but also against security forces and residential compounds where foreigner citizens live.

The list of targets is similar to those hit by a series of attacks launched by al-Qaida inside Saudi Arabia from 2004 to 2007, when dozens of people lost their lives, including many foreigners. That wave of violence threatened the stability the kingdom, one of the world’s leading oil-producing nations. Saudi Arabia is the home Islam’s holiest sites, in Medina and Mecca.

Interior Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Mansour al-Turki said that Saudi Arabia’s security forces are very well prepared to fight against the Islamic State. The kingdom is taking part in an U.S.-led coalition which is fighting the group in Syria and Iraq.

He added there have been five Islamic State attacks across Saudi Arabia in recent months in which 15 civilians and security personnel were killed. The spokesperson explained that Saudis have ignored the Islamic State’s calls to join the fight against their government, the Shiite minority, foreigners or security forces in the kingdom.

“We do have a number of people who do respond to such calls and do try to carry out such terrorist organizations’ orders, but these people do not represent the Saudi population, do not represent the 20 million Saudis,” he said in an interview for the Associated Press, shortly before the arrests arrests were announced.

He explained that security forces’ raids dismantled a cell of 65 people whom were upheld in March and were plotting to target some residential compounds and prisons in Saudi Arabia. They also wanted to carry out attacks which would have led to sectarian strife. Only two of those arrested were Saudi citizens.

Local authorities also foiled a plot for a suicide car bomber against the U.S. Embassy in Riyadh, after they received information about this terrorist attack in mid-March. Two Syrians and a Saudi citizen were detained in this case.

The U.S. Embassy in Saudi Arabia is located in a huge and and very heavily guarded complex in Riyadh, near many other embassies. The embassy building is surrounded on all sides by fortified barriers and is guarded around the clock by police, while U.S. Marines are checking visitor passes inside.

Image Source: Albawaba

How Can a Tiny Songbird Fly 1700 Miles Over The Atlantic

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A very small songbird that spends its summers in the forests of North America has been tracked by scientists over an 1,700-mile journey over the Atlantic Ocean, to the Caribbean, while migrating in the winter to South America, according to a new study.

Researchers were almost certain the blackpoll warbler is making its journey to the Caribbean over the ocean, but until now they had no proof. The scientists attached tracking devices to the birds in the summer of 2013 when scientists.

“It is such a spectacular feat that this half-an-ounce bird can make what is obviously a highly risky journey over the open ocean,” said author Chris Rimmer of the Vermont Center for Ecostudies.

The number of these birds has been declining. “Now maybe that will help us focus attention on what could be driving these declines,” he added.

According to results published Wednesday in the United Kingdom in the journal Biology Letters, the warblers, known to be voracious insect eaters, departed near the northern parts of the United States and Eastern regions of Canada and headed directly to the Caribbean.

The results on the blackpoll warblers migration can help scientists understand more about the significance of changing climate, explained Andrew Farnsworth, a research associate at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology who is an expert in migration biology, but was not involved in the study.

“How much energy do they need and if they don’t get it, what happens?” he asked.

An important number of bird species fly great distances over water, but the warbler is not fitting the regular specifications, because it is the only one who lives exclusively in the forest. Most other species of birds that winter in South America fly via Mexico or other parts of Central America.

Scientists tagged 19 blackpolls on Vermont’s Mount Mansfield and other 18 in Nova Scotia. Three of those were caught again in Vermont still having the tracking device attached on their tiny bodies and two others in Nova Scotia.

Four of these warblers departed for the Caribbean between Sept. 25 and Oct. 21 and flew straight to the islands of Puerto Rico or Hispaniola. Their flights ranged from 49 to 73 hours. The fifth bird left Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, and flew almost 1,000 miles before safely reaching the Turks and Caicos islands for a short stop before heading towards South America.

An interesting fact is that their return flights north, the birds followed a course along the coast.

Image Source: The Silver Ink

Most Parents Can’t Tell If Their Child Is Overweight

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A new study found that many parents in the United Kingdom are not aware of their children weight problem, except for the cases of extreme obesity.

The results of the research has prompted instructions that more needs to be done to aid parents comprehend official measures of overweight and obesity, but also the health risks associated with childhood obesity, and how to promote healthier diets.

A team of researchers from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and the UCL Institute of Child Health published the results in the British Journal of General Practice.

The specialists also discovered that parents are more likely to underestimate their child’s weight if the children is male, but also if they have deprived backgrounds or are black or south Asian.

The researchers said that this information should help policymakers to raise awareness better and to develop programs to address the issue of childhood obesity.

Over the past three decades, childhood obesity has been steadily increasing in the UK as in the US. In the United States, child obesity has more than doubled in children and quadrupled in adolescents, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Obese and overweight children are linked to higher risk of premature death and disease in adulthood. This fact has lead to public health initiatives which target parents to change their children’s lifestyles and diet.

However, these interventions are not likely to work unless parents comprehend the official scales for measuring childhood obesity.

“If parents are unable to accurately classify their own child’s weight, they may not be willing or motivated to enact the changes to the child’s environment that promote healthy weight maintenance,” said Dr. Sanjay Kinra, senior author of the new study and reader in clinical epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.

The British team evaluated data from questionnaires that were filled in by the parents of almost 3,000 children in five different regions of the UK, all of them taking part in the National Child Measurement Programme (NCMP).

The National Child Measurement Programme has found that about one in five children age 4-5 years old is obese. The proportion rises to approximately one in three in the 10-11 age group.

The researchers also learned that only four parents considered their child as being very overweight or obese, despite 369 of the children were in this category.

Image Source: The Telegraph

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